-- Such is, henceforth, the condition of all
Frenchmen, and likewise of all French women. We force mothers to take
their daughters to the meetings of popular clubs. We oblige women to
parade in companies, and march in procession at republican festivals;
we invade the family and select the most beautiful to be draped as
antique goddesses, and publicly promenaded on a chariot; we sometimes
even designate those among the rich who must wed patriots[18]: there
is no reason why marriage, which is the most important of all
services, should not be put in requisition like the others. --
Accordingly, we enter families, we carry of the child, we subject him
to a civic education. We are schoolmasters, philanthropists,
theologians, and moralists. We impose by force our religion and our
ritual, our morality and our social customs. We lord it over private
lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinize and punish
secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only the
evil-disposed, but again "the indifferent, the moderate and the
egoists."[19] Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the
individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his
affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived
type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his
sensibilities.
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